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IN MEMORTAM. 

GARRET A. HOBART, 

VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 









ADDRESS 



OF 



HON. MARTIN H. GLYNN, 



OF NEW YORK, 
IN THE 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 1900. 






WASHINGTON. 

1900. 

3\.~ . 




13 






10 Jd.' oi 



ADDRESS 

OF 

HOX. MAETIN H. GLYXX. 



The House having under consideration the following resolutions: 

'• 'Resolved, That the House lias r< Ived with profound sorrow the Intelli- 
gence of the death of GARRET A. Hobakt, late vice-Presidenl of the United 
States. 

"Resolved, That the business of the House he suspended in order thai the 
public services and private virtues of the deceased maybe appropriately 
commemorated. 

" Resolved, That the Clerk of the House be directed to commuuieate these 
resolutions to the Senate." — 

Mr. GLYNN said: 

Mr. Speaker: In behalf of a number of my fellow-Democratic 

Congressmen from New York State, I lay a laurel wreath at the 
door of the tomb of Garret A. Hobart. My words but echo 
their thoughts; their thoughts but reflect the feeliugs of their 
hearts; their heart-feelings but mirror forth the opinions and be- 
liefs of the American people. Mine was not the pleasure of a per- 
sonal acquaintance with the distinguished statesman whose mem- 
ory we revere to-day. Had it been, I would feel myself better 
qualified to speak the eulogy which I am about to utter, but pub- 
lic men live in their works as authors live in their books and as 
artists abide in their pictures — there to be the subject forever of 
discussion at the pens of writers, the tongues of speakers, and the 
minds of critics. No one living to-day had a personal acquaint- 
ance with Jefferson, Shakespeare, or Michael Augelo, yet who liv- 
ing to-day in this broad land can be said to be unacquainted with 
Angelo, Shakespeare, and Jefferson, who live, though dead? In 
the analogy of this thought lies my reason for uttering the follow- 
ing sentiments of respect, shared in common by my Democratic 
conferees. 

To voice a proper description of Garret A. Hobart would be 
to delineate the last four years of the political history of the United 
States, to epitomize the political incidents of the State of New 
Jersey for a decade at least, and to narrate many chapters in the 
commercial annals of the upbuilding of American commerce and 
the fostering of American manufacturing. However much one 
may differ with the political principles advocated by the late Vice- 
President, he must confess that in the workings of his own per- 
sonal career, in the undertakings of his legal profession, and in the 
consummation of his business plans, Garret A. Hobart was a con- 
structor and not a destroyer. Most men die without creating; few 
die without destroying. He has lived well upon the tombstone 
of whose grave can be carved the verity, " Herein lieth a man who 
was a creator and not a destroyer.'' In his tribute President Mc- 
Kinley paid as grand a eulogy to the memory of Garret A. 
Hobart as man could utter when in his last message to Congress 
he said: 

His private life was pure and elevated, -while his public career was , v. r 
distinguished by large capacity, stainless integrity, and exalted motives. He 
4042 :J 



has been removed from the high office which he honored and dignified, but 
his lofty character, his devotion to duty, his honesty of purpose, and noble 
virtues remain with us as a priceless legacy and example. 

In the life of Garret A. Hobart can be found the lesson that 
inspiration comes of working every day. He, as much as any 
other man of his time, has given proof that genius is encompassed 
in the ability of doing a hard day's work and doing it on every 
working day in the year. He did all things well because he did 
all things intensely. He had learned that in things where the 
heart is not, the hand is never powerful. From his life we learn 
that greatness flows not from chance, nor from a mere happy com- 
bination of events, but simply from the magic of unwavering de- 
termination, clear apprehension, and ceaseless toil. Garret A. 
Hobart became a great man because he possessed these qualifica- 
tions and because they enabled him to fill great occasions. He had 
the abilities, the confidence, and the stamina to meet momentous 
occasions, and therefore such occasions marked him and called 
him to be what the successes of his abilities, confidence, and 
stamina would make him. Jackson, Lincoln, Clay, Blaine, and 
Tilden all drew their greatness from this same fountain head; aye, 
more, all the great master spirits, all the founders and lawgivers 
of empires, all the defenders of the rights of men, all the upbuild- 
ers of the greatness of a nation, are made by these same laws. 

It is fitting that we should pause in the rushings of our work-a- 
day world to pay tribute to a man who, by the sheer force of ability, 
carved his way from ' ' a man with the hoe " to be the occupant of the 
seat of the Vice-Presidency of the United States. Only from the 
facts of a life like this is composed substantial thought. All other 
thought is mere speculation, mathematical philosophy, a puncture 
by the rapier of probability into the clouds of guess-land. It is 
well that we should pause and reflect upon the incidents of such a 
life, because, when events daily increase in the growing magni- 
tude of a nation like ours, history becomes a dwarf and passes 
into biography and there is need in the rapidity of national ad- 
vancement for the microscope to be placed on every honored son 
of the Government, so that he may be seen in his true grandeur 
and taken at his true worth. To the student the life of Garret 
A. Horart must drive home the fact that glory is only a furrow 
in the dust, but at the same time it can not help teaching that it 
is worth while to stamp that dust under foot, so as thereon to 
leave an impression by which the world and posterity may know 
that we have once journeyed along the road of life. 

Some one has said that death transforms an opponent into a 
friend. In a political sense this can not be said to apply to the 
man whose loss we mourn to-day. Even his hardest political op- 
ponents never allowed the smoke of the fiercest political battles 
to blind their vision as to the sterling worth of Hobart. They 
recognized that in politics, as in war, the greatest men are those 
who never capitulate. They realized that while men of different 
political faiths differ as to everything on earth, they may some 
day be united in what is larger than everything mundane, in what 
embraces the sum total of life and thought the arms of Provi- 
dence. History teaches us that as great men see the right more 
rightly than small or mediocre minds, so they see the false more 
falsely. The knowledge of this fact brings to opponents in poli- 
tics a brotherhood and a manliness that almost deify differences 
of opinion and sweeten the acrimonies of opposition. 

4042 



From a fanner's son Garret A. Hobart worked his way 
throiigh college and made himself a legal light of his State and ;i 
power in the politics of the nation. Bis ascendancy was like the 
atoms of the soiling charcoal that we little value, becoming by 
wise combinations and gradual arrangements the resplendent dia- 
mond which every eye admires. Grandly, indeed, in all tin- work- 
ings of his life did this son of the mai the fact that from the 
pure, untainted blood of tho common people come I be rulers of I be 
world. Grandly did he perform his business functions for bis 
associates, his official functions for his country, and accomplish 
projects which scores of mediocre minds could never accomplish. 
The people of his native State loved him, his business associates 
loved him, his opponents respected him. and men are not wont to 
cherish so deeply that which is not deserving of their love and 
admiration. According to Edmund Burke — 

Reproach is concomitaut with greatness: envy grows in a direct propor- 
tion with fame, and censure is tho tax that every man must pay tho public 
for being eminent. 

In the main these assertions are true, but in the history of 
Garret A. Hobart is found the exception which proves tho rulo 
of their truthfulness. Throughout all his undertakings Mr. 
Hobart exercised an indomitable will to acquire and retain suc- 
cess. He found no joys in the intrigues of the wanton courtier; 
his heart was not wedded to the revels of pleasure; his soul always 
took flight beyond the ticklings of sense. With him one great 
goal was always in view and the desire to reach it was father of 
all his efforts. Such ambition has served the world in good stead. 
It has worked like the desire of the philosopher's stone on the 
chemists of old. The object of their search was truly a chimera, 
nevertheless it was productive of a real good in the shape of 
modern chemistry. In like manner civilization owes inestimable 
advantages to such ambition as Hobart's, though the honor which 
is the object of its quest may prove a will-o'-the-wisp. It was 
the spur that goaded Hobart on from business triumph to busi- 
ness triumph, from office to office, only in the end to find him- 
self Vice-President and this country the richer for his ambi- 
tion. It is the motive power that has ever kept the wheel of 
progress in motion and prevented the world from loitering on the 
path to advancement. Far be it from my intention to canonize 
Mr. Hobart. In his career he must have made some mistakes — 
else he would not have been a man — but that man is the greab at 
who makes the fewest, and Hobart's missteps are far outweighed 
by his many noble deeds and kind offices. In fact, to whatever 
shortcomings may have been his we can apply the words of the 
poet: 

Motes in the sunshine, foam-bells on tho ocean. 
Cloud shadows flitting o'er the mountain's brea 

His faults but marked the mighty play, tho motion 
Of a grand nature in its grand unrest. 

To say that Garret A. Hobart was an eloquent man would be 
to do injustice to the great men who have attained eminence by 
the arts of Demosthenes and the attributes of Cicero, and at the 
same time to make that assertion would be to cast a shadow of 
disrespect upon that grand instrument by which Mr. HOBART 
achieved distinction, that most potential of instruments within 
the grasp of man— personal influence. Those who carefully ni »te 
the comparative value of lives in a community soon learn that the 
4043 



6 

element which counts for most is that subtle thing called personal 
influence. In it there is something more potent than money or 
speech, a mystic force which flows out from it and magnetizes all 
that come within its range. It is to the successful man what fra- 
grance is to the flower, what light is to the lamp. It is part and 
parcel of his personality; yet it reaches out3ide and beyond him- 
self. That Garret A. Hobart was endowed with this magnetic 
power in a remarkable degree is evinced from the facts stated in 
this House to-day by the gentleman who knew him well and knew 
him long. The value of this personal influence was greatly aug- 
mented by a great human sympathy and a massive manly sense, 
communicating to his associates and allies new life and energy, 
touching and unsealing in their breasts the springs of resolution 
and self-help, and flooding them with soul-cheer. 

In life there is nothing except what we put in it. In the fifty-three 
years of his life Garret A. Hobart crowded so much work, so many 
successes, so numerous duties as to merit from the American peo- 
ple that most eloquent tribute paid to Goethe by the Emperor of 
Germany when he met him and exclaimed: "You are a man." 
Michelet has gone into raptures over the force of that compliment 
paid to the great German poet, and the American people may well 
be pleased that there died in harness as the second highest official 
in the land a man who could well be called ' - a man. r ' From his 
generosity we know that he appreciated the fact that flowers fade 
without dew and light. From his amiable personality we are sure 
that he realized the imperishable truths that charity and love are 
the dew and light of the human heart. He was not of the pessi- 
mistic mind, which holds that while nations ascend in civilization, 
governments descend in administration. He was not of those 
who are constantly living in the dusk of the past, but rather one 
of those who by the light of the past purpose to see to it that the 
administration of governments keeps step witli the civilization of 
nations. From the fate of Lot's wife being turned into a statue 
of salt for turning back, he had garnered the determination to 
press ever onward in accordance with the thought that he only 
lives who acts in the present and thinks of the future. 

Despite the millions and millions of people on earth, the world 
knows only two kinds of minds— minds that are metaphysical 
pure and simple and metaphysical only, and minds that are not. 
In Robespierre and St. Louis we have examples of the mere meta- 
physical mind. Those that are not metaphysical are more or less 
fatalistical. The minds that work out the most for the ameliora- 
tion of mankind are the minds that are not only metaphysical, 
but also reflective of their antithesis. In Charlemagne and St. 
Augustin we have the greatest examples of this sort of mind, while 
in Hobart it is duplicated in essence, though perhaps not in 
totality. It is such a mind that makes man the ardent believer in 
the dispensations of an all-wise Providence, as the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania and the gentleman from New York, the leader of 
the majority, represent Mr. Hobart to have been. 

In his religious inclinations and political enthusiasm he must 
have been somewhat akin to Cardinal de Berulle. Students of 
French history will remember that when La Rochelle, under Louis 
XIII, resisted Richelieu so handsomely, Richelieu became fright- 
ened and wanted to effect a treaty. Cardinal de Berulle per- 
suaded Richelieu to deviate from this course on account of a cer- 
tain something, he knew not what, which he called '"trust in 

4042 



God." Richelieu, a strong-minded man, made fun of him and in- 
solently asked De Berulle when God was to keep his promise. De 
Berulle replied with magnificenl simplicity, " l am withoul en- 
lightenment, but not without thoughts, and, since you command, I 
will tell thern to you. I count on LaRochelleas i counted on the 
Island of Rhe. I expect success, not from the siege, nor from the 
assault, nor from the blockade, but from some prompl and unex- 
pected effort." And so with Bobart; if he though 1 bis cause was 
right, he was ready to fight— to fight calmly, easily, diplomatically, 
so as to make little bluster and but few enemies, bul confidenl that 
he must win, because he thought he had right with him and b< 
he believed that right would somehow win, even if it had to be 
helped from above by " a prompt and unexpected effort." 

The political career of Garret l. Bobari affords an interesting 
comparison between the politics of to day and the polit 
ago. Csesar. Borgia was a giver of battles with poison. Bona- 
parte was a giver of battles with cannon. HOBART was a giver of 
battles with diplomacy, sagacity, and parliamentary etiquette, 
and so typifies the methods of the present as against the methods 
of the past, as found in Borgia and Napoleon in the olden days, 
when they were wont to destroy men so as not to destroy nations 
by allowing them to hurl themselves one against another. Jn 
those days personalities occupied the whole space of the political 
arena, masses none. In our day the masses are the unit of the 
political battle, personalities simply the kindling wood of a little 
enthusiasm. Battles took place then between prince and prince. 
A mere ordinary man was an obstacle, and was treated as such. 
That was called politics, and, bad as it was. for those who love 
humanity it was better than war. Politics then was a game be- 
tween elevated heads; now it is a contest between millionaire, 
lawyer, laborer, and men in general, in which Garret A. HOB \i:t 
has proved that in the United States of America the son of a poor 
farmer can, by his own merit and his own ability, become a I 
of the purest type and a Napoleon in both finance and politics of 
the greatest influence. The lives of Caesar Borgia and Napoleon 
show that murder and force were the instruments of Buccess in 
the politics of olden days. The life of Hobart gives proof that 
the political triumphs of to-day are the victories of intellectual 
supremacy — not perhaps of one man, but of some party, some 
principle, as represented by supporters and champions. 

Garret A. Hobart is no more. In the councils of his party 
there is a vacant chair; in the halls of our National Legislature 
there reigns an air of mourning; in the business circles of the 
country there are being written resolutions of respect and memo- 
rials of condolence; but for all this sorrow there is consolation in 
the fact that while he lived he was a power among men; consola- 
tion in the knowledge that in honor of his memory the hand of 
History will write upon her everlasting tablets and beneath the 
name of Garret A. Hobart: 

His life was gentle, and the elements 

So mix'd in him. that Nature might stand up 

And say to all the world, "This was a man I" 

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